IF THE LIGHT ESCAPES
A BRAVING THE LIGHT NOVEL
Brenda Marie Smith
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Copyright © 2021 Brenda Marie Smith
Published by
Southern Fried Karma, LLC
Atlanta, GA
sfkpress.com
Books are available in quantity for promotional or premium use. For information, email [email protected].
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval or storage system, without the prior written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Blown Away” © All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.
Music by Douglas Goebel. Lyrics by Douglas Goebel and Brenda Marie Smith.
Lyrics as performed by Douglas Goebel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y40P4htJu48
ISBN: 978-1-970137-22-4
eISBN: 978-1-970137-23-1
Library of Congress Control Number available upon request
Cover & interior design by Olivia Hammerman. Cover art images courtesy of Pixabay.com. Author photograph © John Foxworth of Pearl Street Photography, Austin, Texas. Design services provided by Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.
Printed in the United States of America.
To the boys in my life whom I have loved and ached for through the hardships and wonders of their coming of age:
My brothers Les, Steve, and David
My sons and stepsons Ron, Jeremy, Matt, Aaron, and J.D.
And my stellar grandson Miles
Contents
Title
Share Your Thoughts
Our Southern Fried Guarantee
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part II
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Part III
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Share Your Thoughts
Our Southern Fried Guarantee
Do You Know About Our Monthly Zine?
What do you do when the rivers all run dry?
What do you do when your baby starts to cry?
Where do you run when the flames have filled the sky?
Blown away…
By the situation today.
—From the song “Blown Away”
As performed by Douglas Goebel
PART I
CHAPTER 1
Bright green lights stream and pulse across the northern sky all night now, growing from thin and wispy to bold and fat, expanding, contracting, sending out bands of yellow streamers like they’re partying on ecstasy at some cosmic rave. The lights are pretty, and they’re hypnotic, and they creep me out to the core.
Northern lights every night for two solid weeks in Texas. Halfway to the equator from where they belong. They’re supposed to be a phenomenon tied to the magnetic poles—it’s a scientific fact.
Nothing is right about this. The only explanation I can think of is that the north and south poles are shifting. I don’t know what that means for the planet and the future of its creatures. We don’t have TVs or talking-head scientists to tell us—if any of them would even know.
The universe just won’t stop fucking with us.
Today, I’m hoeing corn in our front yard, sweat stinging my eyes. It’s blistering hot out here—early December in what used to be high-tech Austin, until the fucking sun zapped us with an electromagnetic pulse and took our power, our cars, the damned running water. It stopped pretty much everything—everything modern, that is.
It’s been fourteen months, and all the front yards in our subdivision are mini-cornfields now. We grow beans and veggies in the backyards. It’s a desperate attempt to keep us alive when our food stockpiles run out. Don’t know if it will work, but I’m doing my damnedest to make sure it does.
Nana thinks God smacked us with a solar pulse to make us stop wrecking the planet, but I can’t believe in a God who would be so cruel. This shit is killing people, and it’s so wrong I can’t see straight.
I don’t know how my heart is still beating after I watched my sister Tasha bleed to death last winter—no ambulances or doctors to save her. I may never get over it. And now my whole family is a godawful mess.
The only comfort I get comes from Alma. She was Tasha’s best friend. We shared our pain over our parents being missing and over losing Tasha, and we fell in love. Now we’re married. Some people say we’re too young to be married, but we need each other too much to listen to them. Alma saved my life just as much as Nana and her secret house did.
Within a few hours, I’ve hoed our front yard and the one next door, where the old-lady nurses live. I slug some water and take my hoe to the backyard garden. I’ve got tons more shit to do by nightfall.
Not that long ago, I was a snot-nosed nerd, spending all my time on computers and building robots, studying science and outer space and being shy.
I never thought I’d become an eighteen-year-old urban farmer in an EMP apocalypse, but here I am.
Near dusk, Alma calls me for dinner, and I go inside to wash up—or I try to. Washing up is a bad joke around here. We’re so short on water, all I can do is wet a soapy rag and wipe my face, hands, and arms. I’m still all sweaty when I sit down at the table, but so’s everyone else.
Besides Alma, Uncle Eddie is here, my tweener cousin Milo, and his cutie-pie sister Mazie, who’s seven. Our neighbor Jack Jeffers is getting Nana settled. She needs a lot of help since her stroke, and Jack loves her and takes care of her.
Us kids have had to grow up fast and become like pioneers, except we don’t have horses or covered wagons. We have Nana’s secret house, though—or it used to be secret—full of food and seeds and guns and every kind of tool you can think of. A lot of the food is gone now, but that house and the stuff inside it are the smartest thing Nana ever did. Smartest thing anyone ever did, if you ask me.
She didn’t just feed our family. She fed all the neighbors, too—the ones who didn’t leave to look for food and water before Nana told everyone about her stockpiles. And she organized neighbors to farm the yards and the land around us.
The most brilliant thing about it: she didn’t tell Grandpa about the house full of stuff. If Grandpa had known, he would’ve stopped her, and by now, we’d all be dead.
I haven’t even taken a bite of supper when a loud whistle pierces the air outside, and a bunch of yelling comes from the front street. Someone’s emergency whistle, a referee’s whistle, sharp and shrill and scary as fuck.
Uncle Eddie and I shoot to our feet.
“Stay here and get down,” I tell the others as Eddie and I bolt to the coat closet for guns. “Jack, keep them safe.”
Eddie and I grab our rifles, and we slip out the front door. There’s a lot of weight and heft to a rifle, a deadly vibe. Nothing like the joysticks I’m used to. The yelling outside has stopped, but my heartbeat’s all erratic. I can’t see anyone in the fading daylight, but that whistle shrieks again, down the block to our right. Within minutes, it’ll be crazy dark out here. No streetlights, no moon yet, and so far, no northern lights.
“What’s going on, you think?” Uncle Eddie asks.
“I’ll go see. You stay here and guard the house.”
“You can’t go alone!”
The front door jerks open. I almost crap my pants, it startles me so much, but it’s Milo with a pistol in his hand.
“I’ll protect the old folks and girls,” he says, all ironic, like he’s suddenly in a cowboy movie or some shit. He’s a good enough shot to be in a cowboy movie, even though he just turned fourteen.
“Stay hidden,” I say to Milo, and Uncle Eddie and I step off the stoop. We stick close to the house, passing the garage door, stopping to scan the space between our house and the neighbors’, and then skirting the front of that house.
“He’s going that way, toward Bea’s!” some guy, maybe Silas Barnes, yells from down the block.
“We’re down here!” Eddie calls out. “Where is he? What do you need?”
“Stop him. He stole our last jug of water and a rabbit.” That’s Harvey Zizzo’s high-pitched voice. He and his wife raise rabbits in their garage.
“Is he armed?” I shout.
“Don’t know,” Harvey hollers back.
I can’t see shit. Where’s this guy supposed to be?
“Stay quiet,” Uncle Eddie mutters. “Maybe he’ll make a noise.”
We stand still, partly hidden by a small tree. It’s all I can do to squelch the whining sounds trying to escape from my throat. The last bit of sunlight seeps slowly away.
“He’s not making noise,” I whisper in Eddie’s ear. “Should we do something?”
He picks up a rock from the ground. “Get ready.”
I aim my rifle down the street, between the dead cars. Eddie skips the rock across the sidewalk and into the road. A second passes, and then footsteps pound down the sidewalk and away from us. We take off running.
Up ahead, a tall silhouette appears. A guy running with a five-gallon water bottle on his shoulder, slowing him down.
“Halt!” Eddie barks. “Set down the water and the rabbit or I’ll shoot you dead.”
“Fuck!” says the thief as he freezes in place. I can barely see that he’s wearing a flannel shirt, hanging open, not buttoned. In this heat, the only reason for a heavy shirt is to hide things, like weapons.
“Fuck is right,” I say. “My gun’s on you, too. Put the water down. Now!”
The guy turns sideways, rolling the water bottle off his shoulder and to the ground. He has a long, dark beard growing out of a super-skinny face, his eyes buried under a mess of wild hair.
Silas and Harvey run up from the other side of the guy, pointing guns at him, too.
“Hands up,” I say. “Don’t move.”
“Where’s the rabbit?” Uncle Eddie asks.
“Inside my shirt.” The thief’s voice is all scratchy. “Please, can’t I keep it? My kids are starving.” Then he starts wailing.
This jerk has hungry kids. I’m tempted to let him go with the rabbit, but I worry it will make more people come here to steal from us.
“Hands up high, to the sky!” I poke my rifle toward him. “Stop bawling!”
The guy shoots his hands into the air, whimpering. “I’m trying to stop. It’ll take a minute.”
“Just be quiet about it. Harvey, reach under his shirt and get your rabbit.”
“I guess he killed it,” Harvey says. “It’s not moving.”
I think Harvey might cry about his dead rabbit. Honestly, I could cry for a week about the whole freaking thing. I’m sick of seeing starving people and not being able to help them.
“How are we gonna punish this guy?” Silas asks.
“Letting him starve. How ’bout that?” Sarcasm drips from my voice. Like there could be a punishment worse than watching his kids starve.
“Shit, I’m already starving.” The guy’s shaking all over, as though the effort of holding his hands in the air is too much for him.
“You want us to come up with more punishment? Do you?” I ask. “Harvey, get your rabbit.”
Eddie and I keep our rifles aimed at the thief’s head while Harvey pushes the guy’s shirt aside. A lifeless white rabbit is poking out of a fanny pack. Harvey gasps and reaches in to free the rabbit.
“It’s only a bunny.” Harvey’s shaking as much as or more than the thief.
“Eddie, check him for weapons,” I say.
My uncle pats the guy down. “He’s got a knife.” Eddie pulls something red out of the guy’s shirt pocket.
“Shit, it’s just a Swiss Army knife.” This guy’s voice sounds like something is wrong with it. Probably thirsty as fuck. “I was hoping I’d find a raccoon or a squirrel.”
“So, you thought you’d steal a rabbit instead?” I ask.
“He killed a bunny,” Harvey says. “It’s not even big enough to eat.”
I look Harvey in the eye and slowly take the rabbit from his hands. “It’s too little for adults to eat, Harvey. Let him feed his kids with it.” I shove the bunny at the thief. He stares down at it with his hands still in the air. “Take it and get out of here before I shoot your ass.”
The guy bursts into tears again and grabs the rabbit, hugging it to his chest. “Thank you,” he says in that scratchy voice, like someone took a scouring pad to his throat.
“If you come back, I will shoot you dead without giving you a chance to say shit. Understand?”
“Yes,” says the thief, scrambling away but staring back at us.
“Wait. Your knife.” Uncle Eddie tosses the knife to the thief. He and his kids won’t survive without that knife. It’s not like he could kill us with a Swiss Army knife.
“Thank you,” the man rasps out. “You did me a favor. I want to do one for you.”
“What kind of favor could you do for us?” I’m aiming my rifle again.
“Don’t shoot!” The thief is shaking so hard he’s about to drop the rabbit that he’s clutching by its ears. “It’s something you should know.”
“Like what?” Eddie asks in a menacing voice.
“Some guys came through my neighborhood, waving guns, terrorizing us. Stole our water. Said they were coming over here, that you guys are rich. That’s how I got the idea to come here.”
“How many guys?” I ask. �
�What do they look like?”
“Two big guys. One with a big frizzy beard, one bald with lots of tattoos. They wanted us to go with them, but we weren’t gonna team up with those guys. People get more desperate, though, someone will join them. Then you’re in for trouble.”
Uncle Eddie, Harvey, Silas, and I give each other the side-eye.
“Thanks for telling us.” I lower my rifle. “Now, go!” The thief takes off running.
“Just what we need,” Silas says.
“Seems like things are getting worse out there,” Uncle Eddie says. “More starving people. If they ever band together…”
“We need a damned fort to live inside,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Eddie, “but we can’t build a wall around this whole neighborhood. I’m going to increase the patrols. We haven’t been doing them in the daytime, but now I think we have to.”
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